Great white shark sightings becoming more common, say Mi'kmaw fishermen

When fisherman Matthew James Basque-Augustine saw a sharp-looking fin caught in his lines, he was sure it belonged to a great white shark. 

"There's a lot of fear because I wasn't in a very big boat," he said. 

It happened about 10 years ago — just off of the cape of Richibuctou, about 65 kilometres north of Moncton — and shark sightings were almost non-existent there at the time. 

Basque-Augustine said people would laugh when he told them about the shark, but recently, more and more fishermen have been catching lemon sharks and other shark species in their lines. 

""[They] believe it now, but at the time no one would believe me," he said.

"It's becoming more real that there [are] great whites out there." 

White shark sightings are on the rise in the Maritimes and have been driving interest in the mysterious predators. 

A new documentary from CBC's The Nature of Things, called Jawsome: Canada's Great White Sharks, explores the history of great white sharks in the Atlantic and whether they've become more common there.

The white sharks seen on the East Coast are part of a population that stretches from South America all the way to Newfoundland. They visit Canada seasonally in the late summer and early fall. 

"You [can] see them a lot more than before," said Michael Basque, a fisherman from Potlotek First Nation, roughly 250 kilometres northeast of Halifax.

He said up until about 10 years ago, it was rare to see a shark.

Atlantic great white sharks are considered endangered in Canada, and they are listed as a vulnerable species around the world. As a population, they're difficult to study and monitor because they are mostly solitary and can migrate thousands of kilometres. 

Basque said unlike dolphins and whales, which come up to his boat and show off, sharks are a lot less curious. 

"Sharks, you get a glimpse of them, and they're usually gone," he said. 

Basque said in the last 10 years, he has seen about six sharks, both blue and white.  

Along Cobscook Bay in Maine, more than 100 kilometres southwest of Saint John, there is evidence that sharks have been in the area a long time. 

Archaeologist Matthew Betts from the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., has found shark teeth in ancient shell heaps dating back at least 4,000 years. 

"Most of the shark teeth that we find in middens or in burial or ritual contexts seem to have been worn as pendants," he says in the documentary. 

He said the teeth usually have notches on the sides or holes drilled through the centre. 

"What it suggests to us is a very deep and ingrained relationship between the people here and sharks," he said. 

However, Betts said shark teeth disappear from these archaeological deposits about the time Europeans arrived on the East Coast. 

"Such a profound and long-lived relationship just abruptly stops," he said. 

'The bad fish'

But not everyone agrees about that relationship. 

Bernard Francis, a Mi'kmaw linguist from the Membertou First Nation in Nova Scotia, said he has never heard any stories of sharks in his community. 

"I don't know if there's any kind of a special relationship between Mi'kmaw people and sharks," he said. 

He said Mi'kmaq were known to travel more than 1,000 kilometres away, and shark teeth found at these archaeological sites could have been gifts from other tribes. 

"It's not uncommon that we will have things that were never here," said Francis. 

But he said the Mi'kmaq do have a word for sharks — it's wipitamekw and means "multi-toothed one." 

In an article published by the Canadian Journal of Native Studies in 2004 called Ancient M'ikmaq Customs: A Shaman's Revelations, Earle Lockerby wrote about a letter from a priest in the 1700s recording a conversation with a Mi'kmaw shaman who described life before colonization, and recounted how Mi'kmaq would face attacks from "the bad fish." 

"All too often, these malicious beings attack the sterns of our canoes so suddenly and without warning that they sink the boat and all who are in it," the letter quotes the shaman as saying. 

"Some escape by swimming, but there are always some who fall prey to these voracious flesh-eating fish." 

The shaman added that the people in the canoes would try to harpoon the creature and fend it off for a short time, giving them a chance to paddle toward land. 

Fending off sharks

Melissa and Todd Labrador, Mi'kmaw canoe builders from Kespukwitk in southwest Nova Scotia, said there is traditional knowledge for fending off sharks. 

They said their ancestors hunted whales and porpoises from long birchbark canoes with a rise in the middle, built for navigating ocean waters. 

Melissa said her ancestors would try to trick sharks into thinking the animals were getting too close to land.  

"If you come too close to shore, you risk the chance of beaching yourself," she said. 

"[It's] what my people knew through generations of observation. They would take roots and tie it to the bottom of the canoe with eelgrass or with different things that would be close to the shore."

Melissa said by splitting spruce roots and strapping them to the canoe with other plants, they would secrete an oil into the water that sharks can taste. 

"Then if the shark [saw] the bottom of the canoe, instead of thinking 'Oh, that looks like a lovely seal for lunch,' he would feel nervous because he might be too close to the shoreline," she said. 

One of the reasons sharks are attracted to Atlantic Canada is to feed on the abundant seal population. Young white sharks will eat fish and other small sharks, but as they reach adulthood, they look for larger animals, like sea lions, dolphins and seals. 

White sharks can grow to about six metres in length and usually weigh up to 1,800 kilograms. 

"We need to understand that sharks were here for thousands of years," said Todd. 

"They're here for a reason, so we need to respect them and that they're just as important as anything else on this planet."